Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2023 i Back Street Heroes

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

EDITORIAL

Hello, and welcome to this new issue of BSH! This issue is, to me anyway, a kind o’ special one as it comes out at the beginning of May 2023 (on sale date is Thursday, 4th), and that means that I’ll’ve had a motorcycle licence for 40 years (as of the 7th anyway). Now, I know that, compared with some out there, that’s nothing special to people who’ve been riding since the ‘60s and ‘70s, but it’s kind o’ a big deal to me, y’know? It’s not 40 years of a full licence ‘cos I didn’t actually take me test until April ’87, but it’s 40 all told, provisional and full, and I’m kind o’ proud o’ that. I was intending to try and make the 40 with just a…

3 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

UNORTHODOX ENGINEERING

J.A.P ROTAVATOR SPECIAL Many, many years ago, when doing work experience at the tender age of 15, I was gifted a 600cc J.A.P engine, and I promised myself that, one day, I’d put it to good use but, for those many years since, it’s been sat, alongside other engines and bits and pieces, in the corner of my garage. During one of my regular eBay searches, I saw for sale an old Clifford rotavator, complete with a rare and very attractive Clifford chain-case. Now, unless you’re really into old rotavators, you probably won’t have heard of Clifford, but they were a subsidiary of the more famous Australian-made Howard Cultivators (later Rotavators), and were run under the middle name of owner Arthur Clifford Howard. He started the original company back in…

7 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

PERCHANCE TO DREAM

The bike, a 2006 790cc Hinckley Bonneville, was bought from a chap called Bert Chandler; an awesome bike builder, all-round top bloke, and the man who sold me my first hardtail. I’d been looking for a carbed Hinckley as a donor, preferably one that’d been hardtailed, and found this one, and it was a step up again – a rare find. Using a photo, I did a fast draw-over with my mate Craig whilst working (okay, so not actually working) late one night to ensure it’d be exactly what I had planned, and then shot up to Oxford to see Bert. I hadn’t actually committed to buying the bike, but the more we drank tea, and the more I talked with him, the more it all added up (plus the…

6 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

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1 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

BUILD IT YERSEL'

PART FIVE With Japanese bike electrics, things used to be more simple. My old (1978) CB750 has an AC generator to make the electricity; a regulator/rectifier (reg/rec) to convert it to useable DC and control the output; somewhere to store the power (a battery); contact breakers, or points (which interrupt the current flowing in the primary winding of the ignition coil, inducing a high voltage at the coil output for a short period, enough to arc across the electrodes of a spark plug); and a few switches to turn on lights and make the horn go beep. There are three separate circuits, basically, in a loom: an ignition circuit to make the bike go vroom, a charging circuit to keep it going vroom, and a lighting circuit so that you…

5 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

GARRY STUART RIP

In ‘91 or ‘92, at my desk in the BSH office, early on in my time there, I was introduced to a freelance photographer. I had no idea who he was but, keen to change the style of photography in BSH, I asked: “Could you get bikes sharp on a roundabout?” “Yes,” he said without any ego or arrogance, “I could do that.” I didn’t know then that the guy’d already shot Grand Prix bikes, and learned much of his craft at muddy motocross meetings on rainy days, so custom bikes in the sunshine were never going to present a problem. I said I wanted to make the bikes look as good as possible in print out of respect to their builders’ efforts and commitment, and he grasped this immediately…

3 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

EVENTS

MAY 1st May: Stone Circle Bike Show at Supermarine RFC, Supermarine Rd, Swindon, Wilts (SN3 4BZ). More info from Facebook. 1st May: Gears of Goodwill Custom Show at the Cross Keys, Derby Rd, Swanwick, Alfreton, Derbys (DE55 1BG). More info from 07934 660151 or Facebook. 4-7th May: Tarquin’s Rally at the Breighton Ferry, Breighton, Selby, Yorks (YO8 6DH). More info from Facebook. 5th May: Wheels & Wax at Venue 229, 229 Great Portland St, London (W1B 1PF). More info from Facebook. 5-7th May: NABD’s You’ve Been Nabbed Rally at the Royal Cheshire Showground, Flittogate Ln, Tabley, Knutsford, Cheshire (WA16 0HJ). More info from www.nabd.org.uk 5-7th May: Baskerville Custom Show at the Baskerville Hall Hotel, Clyro Court, Clyro, Hay on Wye, Powys (HR3 5LE). More info from 07580 113517 or ashbournenick@gmail.com…

17 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

RICK HULSE A SIMPLE TWIST OF FATE…

The reason for my frequent visits was the large number of bikers who used to congregate there, which meant there was a fabulous array of beautiful motorcycles for me to lust after! This was in the dim-and-distant late 1960s and early 1970s when bikers tended to congregate at cafés throughout the UK and, at that time, Greater Manchester probably had a dozen or more biker cafés, of which the Skyways Café (named due to its proximity to Ringway Airport, which later went on to become Manchester International Airport) was the best known and most popular in south Manchester. In those days, the vast majority of bikes to be seen there were British makes from Triumph to Norton, AJS to James, BSA to Royal Enfield, with an occasional Velocette Venom or…

4 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

ALL (SEVENTY) SIXES & SEVENS

ON a rare trip to the bright lights of a big city (well, Cambridge), in a back street newsagent, I spotted a copy of an American magazine ‘Street Chopper’; my pocket money just about stretched to it and, having had a look through, my digger dream was born. Step forward 44 years and, finally, I was ready to make that dream a reality. I had the remains of a 1976 Ducati GT860 in the shed and, while helping Selwyn, of Selwyn Motorcycles, Haverhill, relocate his workshop, I’d spotted a Benelli Quattro 500 four-cylinder engine needing a home. A lot of ’70s diggers ran 750/4 Honda engines, as well as Z900 Kwaks, so the four-pot Benelli’d look right at home and, importantly, wouldn’t be just another Honda. I’d also spoken to Malcolm…

7 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

OGRI MCC’S KICKSTART RALLY

SO as to not to offend our gentler readers I won’t put down the actual line in words but, suffice to say, its attitude is something that, collectively, makes us, as bikers, who we are. We’re intensely loyal to our kind and lifestyle, stubborn, often bloody-minded and, yes, we don’t like doing what we’re told, especially when what we’re told to do goes against the grain. Oddly, that can include what we’re told by others of our kind, too, and winter rallying is a case in point – the majority of us look upon those who do winter rallies as ever so slightly unhinged, especially if they’re of advancing years, but that matters not a jot, y’know? The Ogri MCC’s winter rally, the Kickstart, is held in January at their…

3 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

NO FLASH IN THE PAN

*and the rest… For Spike Judd from the wilds (well…) of Suffolk, the first lockdown was not only a government-enforced eight-week paid holiday, but also a fairly frantic eight-week bike building schedule as, not long after it started, he got a ’phone call from a mate with a rather cool old (’40s/50s) 74-inch (1200cc) Panhead Harley who’d kind o’ lost interest in it and, knowing Spike desired it almost carnally (so, okay, perhaps not that much), offering it to him. It was, in his own words (Spike’s, not the mate’s), a fairly decent Duo-Glide (Duo-Glide Pans were the first H-Ds to have front AND rear suspension, telescopic forks up front and twin shocks at the rear, hence the ’Duo’; the previous model, the Hydra-Glide, just had telescopic forks – hydraulic…

5 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

A LIFE IN THE CUSTOM WORLD

AS with most of these misty-eyed recollections, there’s a serious case of our rose-tinted spectacles needing a damn good cleaning – the past wasn’t, perhaps, quite as idyllic as we remember it but, no matter, it’s always good to look back to those heady days of youth. Dave Batcherlar, the D of P&D Customs in Slinfold in Sussex, has been living the life perhaps longer than a fair few of us, and I was privileged to be allowed a good shufti through his own personal photo collection not that long ago, and I thought it might be a cool thing to show you some of the bikes he, and his oppos in both Kustom Korner (which preceded P&D) and P&D, have had a hand in. It was a real eye-opener…

2 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

MR BRIDGES MOTORCYCLE DIARIES

However, I’m not convinced on the reliability of duct tape as a mounting technique for fuel tanks, so something a little more reliable’s called for. There’re all sorts of ways of mounting them; you can even weld them to the frame, which used to be fairly popular in the ‘70s when everything was moulded. Hidden mounts are something that came along later. I’ve seen kits, and it’s not hard to make the parts if you have a lathe. To avoid unnecessary complication, I decided to use the original mounting tabs that came attached to the tank, and drill a couple of holes through the top tube for the mounting bolts – easy enough, right? Well, not really; the tank mounts are undrilled, you need the tank to sit level, and…

7 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

OPENFACE PRODUCTS

AXXIS HORNET SV HELMET This new open-face from new Spanish helmet company Axxis is a cool-looking helmet made to a very high standard, but with a refreshingly competitive price-tag. They’re available in all the usual sizes, have a nice-looking interior, and an easy-to-use-wi’-gloves-on drop-down visor, and come in a huge range of colour options. Prices for the Axxis Hornet SV range start at £99.99 from anywhere that stocks the Axxis range or www.bickers-online.co.uk WIN! FARMYARD PARTY VIP TICKETS Next month sees the return of the famous Farmyard Party in Yorkshire (16-18 June); one of Britain’s best-loved bike events. This year the Big Top (main stage) features The Bohemians (excellent Queen tribute), A Foreigners Journey, Women In Rock, and more, and there’re three other music stages all with their own bars;…

4 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

Motorcycle Action Group

Returning to your bike and finding it’s not where you left it is gut-wrenching and blood-boiling. MARS, or MAG Protected as it later became, started in 1993 when my mate Nigel Agar had his GS850 nicked from outside our house while we were both at a Showaddywaddy concert at the Rooftop Gardens nightclub in Wakefield. It was the second bike he’d lost in less than a year – the previous one being his much-loved Triumph Bonneville which wore a fairly-rare TSS tank, the one with the yellow stripe. Needless to say, he was gutted and mad as hell. Bike theft was bad in the early Nineties – shortly beforehand somebody’d tried stealing my own GS850 from the back of my workplace in Leeds, and a few years before that I’d…

5 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

KAOS AT THE CASTLE

IN October 2022 two hundred and twenty of us headed off to a brand-new rally experience, seamlessly transported into the Norbreck Castle Hotel on Queen’s Promenade, Blackpool. It was a brave move to launch a new event from scratch so late in the year with just blind faith that it’d cover costs, but it worked, and it worked well. Check-in was available from Friday afternoon with very good hotel buffet breakfasts included in the ticket price, and reasonably-priced meals were available in the hotel restaurant for those not wishing to venture into town. There was secure indoor parking for bikes although, that late in the year, few took advantage of it on this occasion. Once booked in at reception, event wristbands were collected from the elegant ballroom which had…

3 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

SITTIN’ PRETTY

Dan Roberts, the owner of this ’ere Sportster, had wanted an ’Arley (or a hog as he refers to ’em) for years – something that was continually reinforced by the fact he had mates who had ’em, and ’cos they were a regular sight and sound at his local biker-friendly pub, The Earsham Queen, as its colloquially known (The Queen’s Head in Earsham, near Bungay, if you’re going to look it up). He’d had bikes before, natch, but after several years of not owning one at all, he decided to take the plunge and buy his first hawg. He differs from most present-day Sporty owners, though, in that his wasn’t an Evo’ Sportster (built 1986 to 2020) as is more common, but an older Ironhead (so named ’cos its ’eads’re…

5 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

BSH CUSTOM CHAMPS 2023

Five years (well, this year’s the fifth!) now we’ve been running the BSH Custom Championships, and it’s turned out to be the biggest custom show in the world, with over 4,000 entrants to date! For 2023 we’ve had a bit of a rethink, a bit of a shake-up, of how we do things, and we’ve made some significant changes. Don’t worry, the basics are still the same, and it’s still free to enter, but we’re making it a little more inclusive – a little better basically! This year there are seven rounds – three online, and four real-world. The real-world rounds are: THE SCOTTISH MOTORCYCLE SHOW (ALREADY BEEN) THE NCC LONDON DIAMOND DAY AT THE ACE CAFÉ, LONDON (1 JULY) THE ROCK & BLUES, DERBYSHIRE (27-30 JULY) NE MAG’S STORMIN’…

2 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

HONDA CB1000R BLACK EDITION

Upon turning the ignition, and letting the TFT (thin-film-transistor – a more refined, full-colour version of a conventional liquid crystal display, LCD, screen) dash run through its start-up sequence, you press the ‘start’ button, and the 998cc, FireBlade-derived, engine bursts into life with a pretty damn raucous roar that I found myself having to shout over to talk to the guy from Honda who’d delivered it. This, I kid you not, while perfectly normal to us lot who run, shall we say, perhaps not perfectly legal exhausts, is definitely not normal in the new bike world where most modern bikes make about as much noise as a kitten farting in a warehouse, and immediately put a smile on me face – this bike sounds like a bike!* The CB1000R is…

5 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

INFESTED WITH BIKERS!

IT really was – they were under the stairs, behind the walls, everywhere. I hadn’t even dared look in the shed; the sound of tinkering quickly made me realise it’d be better to avoid the place. You could hear them late at night, the sound of metal filing and drilling, who knows what they get up to in there with that endless tinkering? Of course I’ve heard the stories, about what they call the ‘projects’ – the long, drawn-out rituals usually held around winter time when, presumably, it’s too dark to go out and forage for parts. They say it’s because they’re partially blinded at night, due to something called Bates? Small, round lights they use to find their way home in the dark, apparently. Honestly, the house is like…

9 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

LETTERS

STAR LETTER This month’s Star Letter wins a Weise Redwood Shirt, rrp £139.99. A classic check shirt, but with an abrasion-resistant aramid lining and CE-armour at elbow, shoulder and back. Rated A for protection, it’s fastened with a zipper to keep it securely closed while you ride. Find out more at thekeycollection.co.uk DEAR BSH, I was just flicking through issue 446, and rereading the NEC show bit – fantastic array of custom bikes. At the end there’s a thank you to the MCIA and that got me thinking. At the moment it seems every council’s introducing either congestion charges or ill-thought-out ULEZ charges. We all know that if there were more motorcycles taking the place of cars on the road there’d be less congestion, and also that, as most…

5 min

Back Street Heroes|June 2023

REMINISCING…

Back in the 1980s, growing up in a small Suffolk town, there wasn’t that much to do. Thankfully we did have an excellent biker pub (no names, no pack drill) and once, as a spotty yoof with a ‘ped, I’d summoned the courage to go into it, it became my, and a fair few others I met while in there, hangout of choice. (As an aside, I really do feel for aspiring young bikers these days ‘cos they don’t really have such places in which to spend their important formative days… guess we were lucky to be born when we were really.) Most Saturday nights a few of us set off on a pub crawl round the town, starting off in said biker pub, and going from there across the…

4 min